Bazaar

This annual event takes place once again in the community centre, Kildallon from 9.30 on Friday 27th November. The usual stalls will be in place and proceeds from the Bazaar go towards parish funds. Donations of gifts to Kenneth Magee and items for the bottle stall to Gertie Woods.

George Hamilton IV Christmas Concert

Last year a number of folk enjoyed enormously a visit by George Hamilton IV. He returns to us again in December with a very different concert, "Christmas in the Country."
The concert will be on Wednesday 3rd December at 8pm in Templeport Community Centre. Please keep the date free and come along for an evening that will we pray be of great blessing. Also please spread the word and invite your friends. Tickets will be available at the door priced €10. Profits will go towards local support for Alzheimer's care. .

Sustentation / Free Will Offerings

We really value the gifts of all our parishioners and friends of the various Parishes in our group - without your giving the work of the Church would not be possible. Once again can we gently encourage people to ensure that their offerings are with the various Parish Treasurers by the last Sunday of the year, ie 27th December - ideally the Sunday before - 20th December. If we can comply with this request then the Treasurers will have opportunity to bank your gifts before 31st December, the end of the financial year. This will enable us to produce a set of accounts based on the balance in the account at that date.
We are also greatly appreciative of the work of our various money counters, recorders and the parish treasurers, and would ask you to get your gifts to them rather than them having to come to you, a task which is difficult, time consuming and embarrassing for all concerned. Unfortunately, if your gift has not been lodged by the 31st December then it will not appear in the 2009 accounts. This is in accordance with new Charities legislation that tightens our recording procedures. Once again though, a huge thank you for your support in giving to the Church.

Short Time Away

Richard expects to be away from late on Sunday 8th to midday on Tuesday 10th November. In the event of emergencies please contact Rev Steve Clark, Telephone: 049 9524778.

Swanlinbar Supper Dance

A Big Thank you to everyone who supported the annual supper dance. It really was a splendid event with a great crowd, beautiful supper, good music and dance. It was also a great team effort. Thank you to everyone who contributed to the success of the night in any way.

Remembrance Sunday

If you worshipped at Tomregan or Kinawley Churches this morning I wonder how many of you thought of the names on the plaques commemorating the fallen soldiers and sailors. Have you ever thought of the people behind those names?
Each name is a precious life, we Christians believe. Each name reminds us – as it should – of the brutality of war and of the dignity of sacrifice.
Like with other such memorials I find myself unwittingly captivated, wanting to stray over each name and touch it, to connect with the sacrifice it represents. In what circumstances did they lay down their life? Was it heroic or banal? Or like the poet Wilfred Owen, who having been awarded the Military Cross was killed just a matter of days before the Armistice in 1918; was it like that a tragic death? What did they feel ? How were their family told?
The Island of Ireland Peace Park at Messines in Belgium is a place of simplicity, a place of tranquility. A path leads to a round tower, beside the path there are inscribed standing stones and stone slabs set into the ground. Along with the memorials recording in stark terms the suffering of the three Irish Divisions, there are recorded selections of words from those present.
The words include lines from two Irish war poets: Tom Kettle, the politician, economist, writer and journalist, who died in September 1916 and Francis Ledwidge, the peasant poet from Co Meath commemorated in Seamus Heaney’s “In Memoriam F E Ledwidge”, who died at the end of July in the following year.
Ledwidge’s words are the concluding lines of his “Soliloquy”,

• It is too late now to retrieve
  a fallen dream, too late to grieve
  a name unmade, but not too late
  to thank the gods for what is great:
  a keen-edged sword, a soldier’s heart
  is greater than a poet’s art.
  and greater than a poet’s fame
  a little grave that has no name.

In the nearby town of Ypres, there is a nightly ceremony at the Menin Gate. Last Post is sounded at 8 pm, followed by the reading of Laurence Binyon’s “Ode to the Fallen” and then the Silence before the sounding of Reveille. The Menin Gate is a stone arch upon which are engraved 54,896 names of those Commonwealth soldiers who fell in the battlefields around Ypres and who have no known grave. Fifty thousand names cover a lot of space.
Let us Never Forget those who fought for us, so many of whom gave their lives to keep us free from Oppression and Tyranny. Lord, help us remember them.
The above is edited from A sermon preached in Salisbury by Canon June Osborne in November 2005 and a sermon for Sunday 8th November 2009 by Ian Poulton in Dublin..